font>
16.42 hrs.
RESOLUTION RE : NATIONAL POLICY FOR CHILDREN
Title : Discussion on the resolution regarding national policy for children. (Discussion concluded and Resolution withdrawn).
MR. CHAIRMAN: The House will now take up the next Resolution on ‘National Policy for Children’ to be moved by Shrimati Renuka Chowdhury. Before the Resolution is taken up for discussion, we have to fix the time for the discussion of this Resolution. Usually, two hours are allotted in the first instance. If the House agrees, we will allot two hours for discussing this Resolution.
SOME HON. MEMBERS: Yes.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Now, I give the floor to Shrimati Renuka Chowdhury.
(KHAMMAM): Sir, I beg to move:
“Taking note of–
the fact that despite our country having signed the UN Conventions on the Rights of Children, attaining these rights remains a far cry; the fact that child in India continues to be much exploited and abused, in so far as– sizeable percentage of children work in hazardous factories and mines including fireworks, match factories, carpet factories, slate and pencil factories; and are sent out to work on fields and as domestic help in house-holds, bars and restaurants; a large number of children are engaged in begging; many more are forced into flesh trade and to work as sex workers; adolescence of a large percentage of girls ends up in motherhood; and atrocities on girl child start not on their birth but even before birth; due to female foeticide, resulting in alarming fall in sex ratio. the fact that there is no plan of action to implement the Right to Education provided under article 21A of the Constitution,
this House is of the opinion that a National Policy for Children be formulated and a National Commission for Children be set up at the Centre and in States.”
Sir, I thank you for giving me this opportunity to share with my honoured and respected colleagues the concern that all of us should have unitedly for the future of this country. May I embellish some facts of our nation today?
In India’s worst drought after India’s Independence, more than 4,500 farmers committed suicide because they could not see ‘India Shining’. Their children are destitute today. The streets are filled with educated unemployed young people who do not understand what is ‘India Shining’. They are children of parents like us and children of parents who have abandoned them. We have children left behind in wars, children who survived Laturs, children who belonged to the streets of India, and children who have no room or shelter to look after them. In Nations across the world, you have people and Governments paying their citizens more to have more children because the replacement levels of population have dropped so much and, in a nation like ours where there is a wealth of human resource, where the social figures show that 54 per cent of India’s population is below 25 years of age, which means the reproductive age is at its peak and we will have a future with a lot more children, what happens to the children in our country who are already there? Besides urban rehabilitation and some occupations, largely in rural India, children are forced to go to work. Child labour is a word that I find very obscene because it contradicts itself.
A child, anybody’s child, is the wealth of this nation. A child should be entitled by birth, by right under this Constitution, to be able to have a childhood that is free, safe and innocent, which encompasses care and loving that sometimes homes do not give. It should be the responsibility of the country to provide for these kinds of children.
India, for some strange reason, only looked at children as extensions of their mothers, or viewed them as a responsibility of their parents. The State never looked at children as a constituency. It never looked at children as an independent entity and never encompassed them in the concept of India’s future. Today, more and more horror stories of what happens to our children across the country are coming to the fore. More and more statistics reveal that children below the age of ten – here there is no gender discrimination, it includes both boys and girls – who have been abandoned, or who have run away from their homes, are children who have experienced great physical abuse and violence. They even experience sexual misuse in our country, both by Indians and foreigners. They are pushed into hazardous jobs to earn for their families and to substitute and enhance incomes. They are physically tortured as domestic helps in various homes.
Children do not have a law that protects them and their independent identities. There is no office to go to. There have been several Acts which have been amended over the years keeping pace with the times, social changes, and awareness levels, but there has been no particular sensitisation towards children. There have been no fora where children can avail any kind of special privileges. This is a growing concern. We have approximately six crore strong workforce of children in the country, though various statistics have alleged that over a period of time this figure has been coming down.
We have had blind spots in interpreting child labour as we call it. In the homes of master artisans or master weavers, certain patterns are held in the minds of elders. These skills are taught to children so that those patterns remain their patent and belong to that particular family. Sweeping generalisations and bans on child-made products have endangered such particular skills. But these are a very small minority. On the other side, you have children engaged in lock making, more horrifyingly in cracker making in Sivakasi, bangle making, matches making and other such toxic substances. Many laws have been made to try and sensitise the people to this. But, as we know, laws are not enough. We have more and more exploitation of child labour happening.
We see the plight of children who are neglected on national highways while, ironically, their parents build roads to prosperity. We see children running away from their homes, taking shelters and sleeping on railway platforms where they are taken advantage of. There are even more horrifying stories of children who have been killed so that their skulls and their skeletons can be sold to medical students in other countries for some wild research.
When such things happen, what is the answer that we have? How can we reach out and help contain this kind of exploitation and indifference? First of all, it is for us to take cognisance of the fact that a child who runs away from a home, who does not have a recognised parental custody or recognised guardian, is automatically the ward of the State.
There have been some efforts to establish proper coordination in the implementation of different programmes run by various Governments. More than 4,000 schools with over two lakh children are being rehabilitated under almost 100 projects, which is woefully inadequate and which is not sufficient for us to eradicate poverty and to provide free or affordable access to quality education with interesting, innovative job-oriented curriculum.
Now, as a public representative, quite often I meet up with children who have run away, and I have tried to put them under one roof. In fact, as part of my Constituency, when I have allocated funds, I have asked for such schools and hospitals to be kept with old-age homes so that children will have surrogate parents and come to know of love, discipline and sharing; and the older people who have no children to look after them, will also have common areas of giving and loving.
Now, when you look at the six crore working children, by all means in the world statistics, this is the largest workforce population. Earlier, the Government in its wisdom had planned that they will eradicate all child labour. It was not always a happy experiment for us because it then prevented the child from getting any kind of supplementary income for the house. It was not the deterrent for family planning, and then these children, in turn, stopped because there was not enough monetary supplement in their families. So, the parents could earn only around that much. Children were viewed as a liability. But they were sent out to work nevertheless and there was no law which protected them after they went. They were the guilty ones, and further the law only harassed them saying: “Why did they go to work?”
Now, in view of all this, my requirement is that we form a National Commission for Children. We should constitute a National Commission for Children whereby we can ensure that there is no discrimination; that all matters concerning children, in the best interest of the child, will be primary, not because he or she belongs to somebody or the other; that the right of the child to life, survival and development will be recognised and protected; that the right of the child to express views freely in all matters affecting him or her, will be encouraged and protected; and that this concern for the child should be attributed to acceptance that the child is the most vulnerable to abuse and exploitation.
Can you imagine the plight of a young child who goes to work in a field perforce? Quite often, you see the girl child acting as the mother of her younger brothers or sisters, who will cook not just for herself but for the whole family because the parents are toiling in the soil. She is denied the right to education because she is more useful in the home. Then, after that, this girl child is discriminated against. Studies will endorse that even the mother’s breast feeds the male child far longer than the girl child because the male child is viewed as socially useful and productive at the end of the life span of their parents whereas the girl child is discriminated against. Most of them have been sexually exploited by the age of seven or eight. More and more horrifying stories of minor rapes are heard. Even today, the House was witness to complaints on an issue raised that a nine-year old child was raped.
These kinds of horror stories have been coming around. Despite all these policies, programmes, and laws like the Juvenile Justice Act 1986, and the Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulations) Act, 1986, the child remains the most exploited and abused section of our society. Over 20 million children are enslaved as bonded labour, 380 million children are kept away from schools. Malnutrition of children continues unabated, taking a heavy toll of the infants. Though our infant mortality rate has come down, still it remains distressingly high. Over one million children are forced into prostitution every year by their very own parents or by the so-called guardians, or are sexually exploited by their family, relatives or by whatever the friendly neighbourhood uncles, as they call them.
Countless children are seen – which is an act of national shame for all of us – begging at crossroads, at traffic lights and at tourist centres. You know that they are not alone; they are part of organised gangs, who kidnap these children, maim them and force them into physical labour. Most of these gangs are dangerous. They get these children addicted to drugs and they use them for drug smuggling. Most of these children particularly in Delhi and other urban areas are run away children and they rob and steal to sustain their smoke and brown-sugar habits. Hence, you will see a lot more rise in drug taking.
So, it is necessary now for us to lay down by law, the basic rights of all children including street children. Who are these street children? As I have defined before, these are children with no known recognised guardian by law, with no known parents by birth or by law, children who have wilfully run away from home, juveniles who may have committed some crime and hence are not claimed back by their own families, children who have been abandoned and children who are wealth of our nation. They are bonded children, they are engaged in begging and they are children of sex workers who face the problem of identity of society. We need to provide an administrative mechanism for protecting and promotion of these rights.
Many a time in this House, we have come out with lofty ideals and thoughts, but nothing much has been implemented. Why is it urgent and important for us to invest in these children today? It is because there is an acceleration and development in information technology in our world, as the world has shrunk into global villages and communication has overtaken all of us. In a world that has compressed the future into today and tomorrow, if we do not invest in this wealth of India, then we are going to bring up a nation of delinquents where social crime can rise which would affect the fundamental fabric of safety and civil society wilfully. This kind of intolerance will only be brought about by us, as a political failure, irrespective of what Governments we belong to.
To provide the infrastructure and to secure the street children, we must create a regulatory authority in each territorial division, as has been provided in clause 6 of the Bill. There has to be a nation-wide move for registration of all births.
MR. CHAIRMAN : Since there is no other Member from the Panel of Chairmen is present here, I would request Shri Palanimanickam to come and occupy the Chair, if the House agrees.
SHRIMATI RENUKA CHOWDHURY : Yes, of course.
MR. CHAIRMAN: I hope that the House agrees to this.
SOME HON. MEMBERS: Yes.
SHRIMATI RENUKA CHOWDHURY : Yes. Thank you very much.
16.59 hrs (Shri S.S. Palanimanickam in the Chair.)
In order to establish a forum for these children, it is necessary for us to set up a National Commission for the Street Children, by the Central Government which will then encompass and instruct all States to take up the basic rights like education, training, healthcare, rehabilitation, etc. We have provided, in clause 8, for the constitution of a ‘Street Children Development Fund’. Therefore, when this Bill is enacted, it will involve an expenditure from the Consolidated Fund of India. It is likely to involve a recurring expenditure of about Rs. 4 crore per annum and a non-recurring expenditure of about Rs.2 crore. It is necessary for us to keep it as a revolving fund initially.
Of course, as the Commission will take off, I am sure, it will find ways and means by which we can enhance the funding for this organisation. If we are clever, creative and sensitive to these needs, we will be able to invest in a talent-pool of these abandoned street children for work-targeted areas where we can train them in specialised skills. We will be able to create employment and more importantly self-employment. We will be able to use them mutually for mutual benefit by both Central and State Governments as flag ships of development for our nation.